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How ought Workingmen to Vote in the Coming Election? 

\ 

SPEECH OF HON. HENRY WILSON, 

AT EAST BOSTON, OOT. 15. 1860. 


Fellow- Citizens : — Holy Writ teaches us that in 
the morn of creation, man was made in the image 
of God, given dominion over the fish of the sea, 
the fowls of the air, and the beasts of the field ; 
placed, innocent and pure, in the Garden of Eden, 
to dress and to keep it. That same sacred volume 
teaches us, also, that the tempter came, that man 
fell from his original purity, and was sent forth 
into a world cursed for his sake, to eat bread in 
the sweat of his face. Since the serpent glided 
into Paradise, and hissed into the too credulous 
ear of the mother of mankind thoughts of disobe- 
dience to the mandate of the “Higher Law,” 
earth has been the theatre of an “ irrepressible 
conflict” between the contending forces of good 
and of evil. This “ irrepressible conflict ” between 
the vital and inextinguishable powers of truth, 
justice and freedom, and the dark spirit of evil, 
which in multitudinous forms ravages and stains 
humanity, will go on until Millennial glories shall 
encircle the globe, and man shall everywhere 
f ecognize the brotherhood of all humanity, love 
ids neighbor as himself, and do unto others as 
ue would that others should do unto him. 

Doomed at his fall from original purity and in- 
nocence to eat his bread in the sweat of his face, 
man, forgetful of the brotherhood of all humanity, 
has sought through all ages, to eat his bread, not 
in the sweat of his own face, but by the enforced 
and unrequited toil of his brother man. The pow- 
erful, unmindful of the sacred rights of a common 
.^humanity, have sought to avert from themselves 
I he doom of the race, by wringing from the weak 
\ mfe fruits of unpaid toil. To filch from his brother 
; fcian the bread gathered by the sweat of his 
'■ ice, man has stained the world with crime. 

1 ’e has warred upon nations, poured out human 
ood like autumnal rains, led millions into 
turnless captivity, forged fetters for human 
nbs, tortured the body, shrivelled and debased 
.e mind, darkened the soul and sunk man, with 
1 his Godlike attributes, down to the level of 
ireasoning beasts of burden. All these name- 
ss woes, these sumless agonies of mankind, 
hich have left scars deeply furrowed upon, the 
ce of humanity and upon the face of nature it- 
If, have been inflicted upon the race to enable the 
ivileged* few to clutch from the unprivileged 
any the bread earned by the sweat of the brow. 
It "is our fortune, fellow- citizens, to live in this 
je, and in this magnificent Continental Empire, 
this land of wondrous fertility, where Providence 
has garnered illimitable resources to be developed 
for human prosperity, power and happiness. It 
is our privilege to be the citizens, of this Demo- 
cratic Republic of North America, with its 
achieved free institutions based upon the recogni- 
tion of the rights of human nature, with millions 
trained in self-government, and in complete pos- 
session of the citadel of consummated power — 
the ballot-box. Here the loving heart, the en- 
lightened conscience and the unclouded reason of 
man can utter their potent voices for just and 
equal laws, and for their wise and impartial ad- 
ministration. In other ages and in other lands, 
whenever the people have sought to recover lost 
rights or to enlarge existing privileges, they have 


been forced, like the sons of Italy now following 
the banners of Garibaldi, to bare their bosoms to 
the sword, the bayonet and the cannon — to face 
battle-field, scaffold and dungeon. Here in our 
America, by the toil and blood of a glorious an- 
cestry, we can go peacefully to the ballot-box, 
abolish the abuses of government, inaugurate 
reforms and vindicate the rights of mankind. 

Our . country began its existence among the 
nations by accepting and proclaiming the sublime 
doctrine of human equality. “ The New Repub- 
lic,” says Bancroft, “ as it took its place among 
the powers of the world proclaimed its faith in 
the truth and reality and unchangeableness of 
freedom, virtue, and right. The heart of Jeffer- 
son, in writing the Declaration, and of Congress 
in adopting it, beat for all humanity ; the as- 
sertion of right was made for the entire world of 
mankind and all coming generations.” * * * 

“ Put forth in the name of the ascendant people ” 
it made the “ Circuit of the world,” and “ the as- 
tonished nations, as they read that all men are 
created equal, started out of their lethargy like 
those who have been exiled from childhood when 
they suddenly hear the dimly remembered ac- 
cents of their mother tongue.” 

Citizens of the Republic, which began “its 
existence,” in the words of John Quincy Adams, 
by the proclamation of the universal emancipa- 
tion of man from the thraldom of man, we are 
once again summoned to perform a great consti- 
tutional duty. Responding to this summons to 
elect a Chief Magistrate of the Republic, we find 
the nation, in this age, illumined by the beams 
of a humane, Christian civilization, stirred to its 
profoundest depths by the “irrepressible con- 
flict” between the interests and claims of the 
few, who eat their bread — not in the sweat of 
their brows, but by the enforced and unrequited 
toil of bondmen — and the enduring interests and 
indefeasible rights pf millions of toiling men who 
eat their bread in the sweat of their own faces. 
Living upon the enforced and unpaid toil of four 
millions of black bondmen, the slave-masters now 
haughtily proclaim their right to take their 
human chattels into the Territorial possessions of 
the Republic — to hold them there under the pro- 
tecting folds of the national flag, in spite of the 
legislation of Congress, or of the people inhabit- 
ing the Territories, or any human power. In 
full possession of the governments of the slave- 
holding States, abrogating, in support of their 
interests in human flesh, the freedom of speech 
and of the press, aye, and of the ballot-box, too, 
they haughtily assume the control of the National 
Government, and defiantly tell the toiling mil- 
lions of America, who eat their bread in the 
sweat of their own faces, they will “ shiver the 
Union from turret to foundation stone,” if they 
dare take, by constitutional means, possession of 
their own government, noyr shamefully perverted 
by the flesh jobbers to the interests of human 
slavery. 

Shall the slave masters of America range over 
the vast Territories of the United States, with 
their bondmen ? or shall these Territories be for- 
ever consecrated to freedom and free institutions 


for all — preserved for the free laboring men of 
America, their children and children’s children ? 
Shall the privileged few or the unprivileged 
many guide the counsels of Republican America ? 
These questions, so pregnant with interests of 
transcendant magnitude, address themselves to 
the heart, the conscience and the judgment of the 
American people, for upon their right decision 
depends in no small degree the permanent inter- 
ests and the enduring renown of the Republic. 
These questions, involving issues so vast, press 
themselves upon the consideration of all Ameri- 
ca. The man of wealth may, perhaps, be deaf 
to these pressing questions — the merchant or the 
professional man, influenced, perhaps, by tempo- 
rary interests, may put them aside ; the farmer, 
standing, in conscious pride, on his fee simple 
acres, may postpone them to a more convenient 
season, but the poor man, the mechanic, the 
laboring man, the man who, by the sweat of his 
brow, earns the bread which supports the wife 
of his bosom and the children of his love, can- 
not shrink from meeting the issues now forced 
upon the country by the slave perpetualists and 
slave propagandists. Self-interest, self-respect, 
the love he bears his wife, and the hopes centered 
in those who inherit his blood and bear his name, 
all urge, press, command the poor man, the me- 
chanic, the laboring man, to rush to the ballot- 
box, on the 6th of November, and vote to take 
the Government of his country from the unhal- 
lowed grasp of men who, by word and deed, 
have proved themselves the mortal enemies of 
free labor and free laboring men, and to place 
that Government in the hands of statesmen who 
will maintain the rights, interests and dignity of 
free labor — statesmen who will 

“ take 

Occasion by the hand and make 

The bounds of freedom wider yet.” 

Glancing over this assemblage of the freemen 
of East Boston, I see before me the manly forms 
of toiling men who, through weary days and 
sleepless nights of personal toil, have won for 
themselves positions of independence, or who 
now, by the scanty wages of manual labor, sup- 
port themselves and the dear and loved ones of 
their household. And I say to you, men of 
Massachusetts, slavery is the unappeasable enemy 
of the free laboring men of America — of the 
North and of the South ! Aye, I. repeat — sla- 
very is the unappeasable enemy of the free labor- 
ing men of America, of the North and of the 
South ! The party that upholds slavery in 
America, that would extend its boundaries, in- 
crease its influence and its power, is the mortal 
enemy of the free white laboring men of the 
United States! I declare to you, men of Mas- 
sachusetts, and if I could be heard, I would pro- 
claim it in the ear of every laboring man in 
America, the slavery of the black man has 
degraded labor and the white laboring man of 
the South, and dishonored the white laboring 
man of the North ! Some writer, I think it was 



working man and the toiling millions of the 
globe share in that degradation. Slavery makes 
labor dishonorable— puts the brand of degrada- 
tion upon the brow of manual labor, free as well 
as slave, blights the homes of the free laboring 
white men of the South, and casts its balefrq 
shadows over the homes, the fields, and the work 
shops of the laboring men of the North. “< 


In 1620— two hundred and forty years ago— 
freedom and slavery came to the shores of Amer- 
ica/ Freedom took the rugged soil and still 
more rugged clime of the North; slavery took 
the genial clime and sunny lands ot the South. 
Freedom, starting from Plymouth, has advanced 
with steady step westward, crossed the Rocky 
Mountains to the shores of the Pacific seas, 
founding Commonwealths which recognize the 
eternal laws of man’s being. Slavery, starting 
from Jamestown, has advanced westward and 
southward into the depths of the continent, 
founding States of privilege and caste. The 
results of these two antagonistic systems are plain 
to the comprehension of all men. 

Here, in these free Commonwealths, are twenty 
millions of freemen,. with free speech, free press, 
free schools, free churches, and free institutions. 
Here, all questions that concern humanity are 
examined and discussed by the unfettered press 
and the free thoughts and words of men. Here, 
“labor,” in the words of Daniel Webster, “looks 
up and is proud in the midst of its toil.’ ’ Here, 
the laboring man, who daily goes forth with a 
brave heart to toil for his loved ones, wins not 
only bread by the sweat of his face, but the ap- 
plauding voice of men who honor labor, who 
believe the laborer is worthy of his hire. Here, 
the toil of the working man is lightened by 
ennobling motives, by aspirations which ex- 
pand the mind and elevate the soul. The toil 
which wearies his arm is to make glad the home 
of wife and children ; to smooth adown the de- 
clivity of life the steps of parents to whom he 
owes his being ; to lift the burdens of life from 
brother, sister or friend ; of* to win for him com- 
petence, independence, positions of power, the 
lofty and glittering prizes of ambition. Here, 
the laboring men in all the fields of manly toil 
are working out a condition of society for the 
toiling masses more elevated than can be found 
in any other portion of the globe. Here, agricul- 
ture, commerce, manufactures, the mechanic arts, 
churches, schools, libraries, the institutions of a 
refining civilization, flourish in vigor and strength. 
Such are the magnificent results of Freedom in 
the North. 

The results of Slavery in the South glare upon 
us from every rood of the land stained by its exist- 
ence. The fruits of slavery are bitter to the taste 
and sickening to the soul of man. There are 
auction blocks, where man, made in the image of 
God, is sold like the beasts that perish ; there are 
chains and fetters for human limbs ; whips to 
scourge and torture the body, and laws to debase 
and brutalize the mind and soul of man. There, 
labor is dishonored — laborers degraded, despised. 
“ To work,” said William Ellery Channing, “ in 
sight of the whip, under menace of blows, is to 
be exposed to perpetual insult and degrading 
influences. Every motion of the limbs which 
such a menace urges, is a wound to the soul.” 
To work beside the bondmen urged on to toil by 
the menace of blows degrades the poor white 
laborer down to the abject condition of the slave. 
To continually eat the bread of enforced and 
unrequited toil, to look upon labor extorted by 
the menace of the lash — upon the laborer thus 
degraded, excites in the bosom of the slave mas- 
ter that scorn for manual labor, and that con- 
tempt for laboring men, now so manifest in 
the slave States of republican America. 

The deterioration, exhaustion and desolation of 
the soil of the South, under the culture of unskil- 
led, untutored, unrewarded slave Labor, stands 
; confessed by even the champions of that cleaving 


3 


curse. Thousands of square miles — millions of 
acres of the best soil of the western world have 
been blighted, blasted, desolated by the polluting 
footsteps of the bondman. The champions of 
slavery, men who would eternize it, extend its 
boundaries and its dominion over the National 
Government, have borne testimony to the desolat- 
ing effects of the Southern system of agriculture, 
which means the Southern Slave Labor system, 
upon the most prolific soil of the continent. 

Nearly two and a half centuries ago, Sir 
Thomas Dale said of Virginia, that you might 
take the four best countries of the world, and they 
would not compare with that colony in fertility 
of soil. At an early period, Lane, Governor of 
the Raleigh Colony said of Virginia and Carolina, 
“It is the goodliest soil under the cope of heaven 
— the most pleasing territory in the world.” 

Says “ A perfect description of Virginia,” 
published in London in 1649: “New England 
is to Virginia as Scotland is to England. There 
is much cold, frost and snow ; their land is bar- 
ren ; except a herring be put into the hole you set 
the corn in, it will not come up.” 

More than two hundred years have passed since 
these words were written, and this “goodliest 
soil under the cope of heaven,” where they were 
not forced, like the dwellers of poor New Eng- 
land, to “ put a herring in the hole they set the 
corn in” to bring it up, was characterized by 
Henry A. Wise in 1855 as “ poor land,” the pos- 
session of which was “ poverty added to poverty.” 
“ You all own plenty of land,” said that champion 
of slavery, “ but it is poverty added to poverty, 
poor land added to poor land ; and nothing added 
to nothing makes nothing. * * * You have 

the owners skinning the negroes, and the negroes 
skinning the land, and you all grow poor together. 
You have relied alone on the power of agricul- 
ture ; and such agriculture ! Your sedge-patches 
outshine the sun ; your inattention to your only 
source of wealth has seared the bosom of mother 
earth. Instead of having to feed cattle on a 
thousand hills, you have to chase the stump-tailed 
steer through the sedge-patches to procure a 
tough beefsteak.” 

Charles J. Faulkner, now Minister to the Court 
of Louis Napoleon, said in the Constitutional 
Convention of Virginia, in 1832, of millions of 
acres of this goodliest soil under the cope of 
heaven, that it was “ barren, desolate and seared, 
as if by the avenging hand of Heaven;” that 
the “ derision, discontent, indolence and poverty 
of the Southern country ” were the fruits of that 
system which made “ freemen regard labor as dis- 
graceful, and slaves shrink from it as a burden ty- 
rannically imposed upon them and he implored 
the statesmen of the Ancient Dominion to rescue 
and save her from the fatal effects of slavery, 
that “ bitterest draught in the chalice of the 
destroying angel.” Such are the descriptions of 
the trusted sons of Virginia, of that “ goodliest 
soil under the cope of heaven,” now blighted, 
exhausted, desolated in producing that “Virginal 
crop” of human flesh, in nursing that loathsome 
commerce in humanity which causes the bitter 
tears of riven hearts ever to flow, and the endless 
wail of agonized souls to ascend to God. 

Judge Longstreet, a native of Georgia, refers 
to a classic dwelling which occupied a lovely spot 
in one of the most fertile regions of his native 
State. It was overshadowed by majestic hick- 
ories, towering poplars, and strong-armed oaks. 
Forty-two years afterwards he visited this spot, 
once so lovely : “ The sun poured his whole 
strength upon the bold hill which once supported 


the sequestered school-house ; a dying willow 
rose from the soil which had nourished the vene- 
rable beech ; flocks wandered among dwarf pines, 
and cropped a scanty meal from the vale where 
the rich cane had bowed and rustled to every 
breeze ; and all around was barren, dreary and 
cheerless.” 

De Bow’s “Resources of the South,” from 
Fenno’s Southern Medical Reports, speaks of 
“ decaying old tenements ” in Georgia — “ red old 
hills, stripped of their native growth and virgin 
soil, and washed into deep gullies, with here and 
there patches of Bermuda grass and stunted pine 
shrubs struggling for subsistence on what was 
once the richest soil of America.” 

In traversing his own native county of Madi- 
son, Senator Clay, of Alabama, mournfully de- 
clares that “ One will discover numerous farm 
houses, once the abodes of industrious and intel- 
ligent freemen, now occupied by slaves, or ten- 
antless, deserted, and dilapidated ; he will observe 
fields once fertile, now unfenced, abandoned, and 
covered with those evil harbingers, fox tail and 
broom sedge ; he will see the moss growing on 
the mouldering walls of once thrifty villages ; and 
will find ‘ one only master grasps the whole do- 
mains ’ that once furnished happy homes for a 
dozen white families. Indeed, a county in its 
infancy, where, fifty years ago, scarce a forest 
tree had been felled by the axe of the pioneer, is 
already exhibiting the painful signs of senility 
and decay apparent in Virginia and the Carolinas ; 
the freshness of its agricultural glory is gone ; 
the vigor of its youth is extinct, and the spirit of 
desolation seems brooding over it.” 

Gazing upon these “painful signs of senility 
and decay ” in young Alabama, which are so “ ap- 
parent in Virginia and the Carolinas,” upon the 
“ desolation which seems brooding ” over the 
“ fields once fertile, now unfenced and aban- 
doned,” the Senator must have heard ringing in 
his ears those terrible words of George Mason, 

“ slavery brings the curse of heaven on a country.’ 

Slavery has not only scarred the fields of the 
sunny South, but it has more deeply scarred the 
face of humanity. Its ruinous power is visibly 
written on the foreheads of millions of poor white 
men. Senator Hammond, in an address before 
the South Carolina Institute, said : “Of the three 
hundred thousand white inhabitants of South 
Carolina, there are fifty thousand whose industry, 
such as it is, and compensated as it is, is not ade- 
quate to procure them honestly such a support 
as every white person is entitled to. Some of them 
maintain a feeble and injurious competition with 
slave labor ; some can scarcely be said to work at 
all ; they obtain a precarious subsistence by occa- 
sional jobs, by hunting, by fishing, sometimes 
by plundering fields or folds, and too often by what 
is in its effects far worse— trading with slaves, and 
seducing them to plunder for their benefit.” 

Senator Hammond, one of the champions of 
slavery, here is forced to make the fatal admis- 
sion that thousands of the sons of South Caro- 
lina are forced to “ maintain a feeble and inju- 
rious competition with slave labor.” 

William Gregg, in an address delivered before 
this same South Carolina Institute, in 1851, said : 
“I put down the white people who ought to 
work, and who do not, or are so employed as to 
be wholly unproductive, at one hundred and 
twenty- five thousand. * * * A large por- 

tion of our poor white people are wholly neglected, 
and are suffered to while away an existence in a 
state but one step in advance of the Indian of the 
forest, f * * Many a one is reared in proud 


4 


South Carolina, from birth to manhood, who has 
never passed a month in which he has not been 
stinted for meat. * * * These may be start- 

ling statements, but they are nevertheless true.” 

A Southern- born gentleman who had resided 
in South Carolina, and who had travelled in 
Spanish America, said to Mr. Olmsted, of New 
York, author of “ A Journey Through the Sea- 
board Slave States,” speaking of the Spanish and 
Hispano-Indian races, that he had “ seen, among 
the worst of them, none so entirely debased, so 
wanting in all energy, industry, purpose of life, 
and in every thing to be respected, as among ex- 
tensive communities on the banks of the Conga- 
ree in South Carolina. * * * * 

They are more ignorant, their superstitions are 
more degrading, they are much less industrious, 
far less cheerful and animated, and very much 
more incapable of being improved and elevated 
than the most degraded peons of Mexico. Their 
chief sustenance is a porridge of cow-pess, and 
the greatest luxury with which they are acquainted 
is a stew of bacoii and peas with red pepper, which 
they call ‘ hopping John.’ ” 

Speaking of tire sand-hillers, Mr. Olmsted says 
that a rich planter described them in these words : 
“They seldom have any meat, except they steal 
hogs which belong to the planters or their negroes, 
and their chief diet is rice and milk. They are 
small, gaunt and cadaverous, and their skin is 
just the color of the sand hills they live on. 
They are quite incapable of applying themselves 
to any labor, and their habits are very much like 
those of the old Indians.” 

A Northern gentleman who had spent a year 
in South Carolina, said to Mr. Olmsted, after 
speaking respectfully of the wealthier class : “ the 
poor whites, out in the country, are the meanest 
people I ever saw — half of them would be con- 
sidered objects of charity in New York.” 

With these terrible effects of slavery upon the 
soil and people of South Carolina, her politicians 
are clamoring for the re-opening of the African 
slave trade, for a slave code for the Territories, 
and muttering treason and breathing out threats 
of bloodshed and civil war. Orr, defeated in his 
aspirations to run on the Douglas ticket for the 
Vice-Presidency, would have South Carolina go 
out of the Union if two other States would go 
with her. Aspiring to a seat in the Senate, 
hoping to win the lost confidence of the sincere 
fire-eaters, he heroically avows that he would not 
permit Lincoln to execute the laws of the country 
excepting “ over the bodies of the slain sons of 
the South.” Fearing that his treasonable avow- 
als will not magnify him enough at home to 
secure the coveted prize of the Senatorship, this 
insincere and hypocritical politician writes to an 
eminent Union Democrat to reply to his treasona- 
ble utterance, and thus give him importance in 
the eyes of the people of South Carolina. The 
mild, gentle, dignified Keitt, Keitt who never 
struts, vapors nor blusters, never excites the 
irrepressible mirthfulness of the House, nor 
amuses the galleries with the chatterings, grim- 
aces and contortions of a galvanized monkey, 
would “ shiver the Union from turret to founda- 
tion stone,” to “ defend an institution guarded 
by the records of the world, by the traditions of 
all mankind, by the logic of history and the fitness 
of things, and without which the South would 
sink down into chaos.” 

Mr. Olmsted says of large portions of the 
people of Georgia, “ they are coarse and irre- 
strainable in appetite and temper ; with perverted, 
eccentric and intemperate spiritual impulses. 


faithless in the value of their own labor, and 
almost imbecile for personal elevation.” Mr. 
Tarver, of Missouri, in a work on “Domestic 
Manufactures in the South and West,” says : “ I 
have observed of late years that an evident dete- 
rioration is taking place in this part of the popula- 
tion, the younger portion of it being less educated, 
less industrious, and, in every point of view, less 
respectable than their ancestors.” 

Mr. Olmsted has just published a w r ork en- 
titled “ A Journey through the Back Country of 
the Slave States.” Travelling for nearly six 
months on horseback, for many thousands of 
miles, through interior portions of the slave 
States, he saw the disastrous effects of slavery 
upon the social life of the people. The people 
generally are coarse, reckless and inhospitable, and 
their state of civilization such that they have no 
idea of the comforts which the mass of even our 
Northern laboring men enjoy; that the standard 
of comfort is low, so that in nine cases out of ten, 
between the Mississippi and the James Kiver, he 
“slept in a room with others, in a bed which' 
stunk, supplied with but one sheet, if any ; 
washed with utensils common to the whole 
household ; found no garden, no flowers, no 
fruit, no tea, no cream, no sugar, no bread, no 
curtains, no lifting windows, (three times out of 
four absolutely no windows,) no couch. If one 
reclined in the family room, it was on the floor, 
for there were no carpets or mats. For all that, 
the house swarmed with vermin. There was no 
hay, no straw, no oats, no discretion, or care, or 

honesty, at the ; there was no stable but a 

log pen, and besides this no other out-house but 
a smoke house, a corn house, and a range of 
nigger houses. * * * * From the banks 

of the Mississippi to the banks of the James, I 
did not (that I remember) see, except perhaps in 
one or two towns, a thermometer, nor a book of 
Shakespeare, nor a piano-forte or sheet of music, 
nor the light of a carcel or other good centre 
table or reading lamp, nor an engraving, or a 
copy of any kind of a work of art of the slightest 
merit. Most of these houses were, I should also 
say, the mansions of ‘planters,’ * slave- owners,’ 

* cotton lords ’ of the ‘ Southern aristocracy.’ ” 

Mr. Olmsted declares that in nearly six months’ 
travel, during which he came to public houses 
not oftener than once a week, and was thus 
generally forced to seek lodging and sustenance 
at private houses, this was “often refused, not 
unfrequently rudely refused. But once did I 
meet with what Northern readers could suppose 
Mr. De Bow to mean by the term, * free roadside 
hospitality.’ Not once with the slightest appear- 
ance of what Noah Webster defines hospitality — 

‘ the practice of receiving or entertaining strangers 
without reward.’ Only twice, in a journey of 
four thousand miles, made independently of 
public conveyances, did I receive a night’s lodg- 
ing or a repast from a native Southerner without 
having the exact price in money, which I was 
expected to pay for it, stated to me by those at 
whose hands I received it.” 

De Bow’s Review, a work devoted to the inter- 
ests of slavery, says : “ The menial class is gen- 
erally regarded as of the lowest ; and in a slave 
State, this standard is ‘ in the lowest depths a 
lower deep,’ from the fact that, by association, it 
is a reduction of the white servant to the level of 
their colored fellow menials.” 

Measuring laboring w T hite men in the slave 
States by this “standard” which reduces them 
“to the level of their colored fellow-menials ,” it is 
no matter of surprise that the slave-masters enter- 


5 


tain for the white workingmen of the South and 
.• of the North, sentiments and feelings of scorn 
and contempt. Mr. Olmsted, in his “ Journey 
to and through Texas,” treating of society, South, 
► speaks of a “ devilish undisguised and recognized 
contempt for all humbler classes. It springs from 
r their relations with slaves — and is simply incura- 
ble.” This “incurable” sentiment of “ devilish 
undisguised and recognized contempt” of slave 
„ masters and their allies for poor laboring white 
men, finds utterance in the crude productions of 
their authors, in the speeches of their public men, 
and in the presses that lead public opinion in the 
' slave States. 

Mr. George Fitzhugh, of Richmond, Virginia, 
a political writer of large reputation in the South, 
published in 1854 a work entitled “ Sociology for 
the South ; or the Failure of Free Society,” in 
which he said : 

“Ten years ago we became satisfied that slav- 
r ery, black or white, was right and necessary. 
We advocated this doctrine in very many essays.” 

“ We do not adopt the theory that Ham was 
the ancestor of the negro race. The Jewish 
*• slaves were not negroes; and to confine the jus- 
tification of slavery to that race, would be to 
weaken its Scriptural authority, and to lose the 
whole weight of profane authority — for we read 

* of no negro slavery in olden times.” “ Slavery, 
black or white, is right and necessary.” “ Nature 
has made the weak in mind or body, slaves.” 
“ Men are not born entitled to equal rights. 

* It would be far nearer the truth to say, that 
‘ some were born with saddles on their backs, 
and others booted and spurred to ride them — and 
the riding does them good.’ ‘They need the 
reins, the bit and the spur.' * Life and liberty 
are not inalienable.’ The Declaration of Inde- 
pendence is exuberantly false and aborescently 

' fallacious.” - 

“ Make the laboring man the slave of one man, 
instead of the slave of society, and he would be 
s far better off.” “TWO HUNDRED YEARS OF 
LIBERTY HAVE MADE WHITE LABOR- 
ERS A PAUPER BANDITTI.” 

“ Free society is a monstrous abortion, and 

* slavery the healthy, beautiful and natural being 
which they are trying unconsciously to adopt.” 
“ The slaves are governed far better than the free 

-> laborers at the North are governed. Our negroes 
are not only better off as to physical comfort than 
free laborers, but their moral condition is better.” 
c The Richmond Enquirer , the leading Demo- 
cratic organ of the South, edited in 1856 by Roger 
A. Pryor and a son of Gov. Wise, the Examiner , 
and other leading journals, indorsed these senti- 
f ments of Fitzhugh, assailed free society, main- 
tained that “ slavery is right, natural and neces- 
sary ; ” that “it is in itself right ; ” “ does not 
' depend on difference of complexion ; ” and that 
“the laws of the Southern States justify the 
holding of white men iit slavery.” The South 
, Side Democrat, edited by Mr. Banks, of Vir- 
ginia, a candidate of the Democracy in 1856 for 
Clerk of tho House of Representatives, and now 
the editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer, the leading 

* Douglas organ of the West, said, in 1856 : 

, “We have got to hating every thing with the 
prefix FREE, from free negroes down and up 
a through the whole catalogue— FREE farms, 
FREE labor, FREE society, FREE will, FREE 
( thinking, FREE children and FREE schools — 
all belong to the same brood of damnable isms. 

) But the worst of all these abominations is the 
modern system of FliEE SCHOOLS. The New 
.England system of free schools has been the cause 


and prolific source of the infidelities and treasons 
that have turned her cities into Sodoms and 
Gomorrahs, arid her land into the common nest- 
ling places of howling Bedlamites. We abominate 
the system because the SCHOOLS ARE FREE.” 

And the Muscogee (Ala.) Herald said in 1856 : 

“ Free society ! we sicken of the name. What 
is it but a conglomeration of GREASY 
MECHANICS, FILTHY OPERATIVES, 
SMALL FISTED FARMERS. All the North- 
ern, and especially the New England States, are 
devoid of society fitted for well-bred gentlemen. 
The prevailing class one meets with, is that of 
mechanics struggling to be genteel, and small 
farmers who do their own drudgery, and yet 
who are hardly fit for association with a Southern 
gentleman’s body-servant.” * * * 

These abhorent doctrines — these sentiments so 
scornful, so contemptuous of labor and laboring 
men are shared by Southern writers, presses and 
politicians, and they go unrebuked by the pliant 
presses, writers and orators of the Northern 
Democracy. 

On the 4th of March, 1858, Senator Hammond 
of South Carolina stood up before the represen- 
tatives of the toiling millions of America and 
declared that 

“ In all social systems there must be a class to 
do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of 
life — that is, a class requiring but a low order of 
intellect, and but little skill. Its requisites are 
vigor, docility, fidelity. * * It constitutes 

the very mud-sills op society and of political 
government ; and you might as well attempt to 
build a house in the air, as to build either one or 
the other except on the mud-sills.” That “ The 
man who lives by daily labor — in short, your 

WHOLE CLASS OF HIRELING MANUAL LABORERS 
AND OPERATIVES, AS YOU CALL THEM, ARE 

SLAVES.” * * * “ The difference between 

us is, that our slaves are hired for life — yours are 
hired by the day. * * * YOUR SLAVES 

ARE WHITE— OF YOUR OWN RACE.” 

These offensive sentiments of one of the ac- 
knowledged chiefs of the slave power and of the 
slave Democracy, uttered in the face of the repre- 
sentatives of “ hireling manual laborers ” — of 
Senators, many of whom had been themselves 
“ hireling manual laborers” — “ the mud-sills of 
society ” — received no word of rebuke from the 
representatives of that recreant Democracy of the 
North, which is ever false to freedom and true to 
the interests of slavery. 

But none of the slave- masters have excelled 
Herschel V. Johnson, the candidate of the 
Douglas Democracy for the Vice-Presidency, in 
insolence toward the working-men of America. 
This owner of one hundred and seventeen labor- 
ing men and women, stood in Independence 
Square, in 1856, beneath the shadow of that hall 
where the sublime creed of human equality was 
proclaimed in 1776, and declared that “ there 
must be a laboring class — a class of men who get 
their living by the sweat of their broio,” and that 
“WE BELIEVE CAPITAL SHOULD OWN LABOR.” 
Standing the other day before the working-men 
of Pittsburg, he insolently and scornfully told 
them to “ look at the slaves in your own 
workshops ! They are driven to the polls 

AT THE BECK OP THEIR MASTERS, UNDER PENALTY 

of being discharged.” Standing before the men 
of Indiana, on soil consecrated forever to freedom 
by the ordinance of 1787, he bade them “ plant 
their foot on every man’s neck who dares to say that 
he will interfere with slavery anywhere.” 

Listen, men of Massachusetts, to the insolent 


6 


and brutal mandate of this Democratic flesh 
jobber, who “ believes capital should own labor,” 
to his pliant followers to plant their feet upon 
the necks of men who dare say it would be for 
the interests of white laboring men to exclude 
slavery from the territories. To the assembled 
people of Terre Haute, Indiana, this aristocratic 
flesh-monger declared that he “ owned twenty 
negroes that could beat Abe Lincoln in splitting 
rails,” and that he “ had rather have one of them 
for President than Abe Lincoln, so help him 
God ! ” And this lordly owner of one hundred 
and seventeen human beings — this foul-mouthed 
insulter of the laboring men of America — was 
heartily endorsed by the Massachusetts Douglas 
State Convention at Springfleld for his fidelity to 
“the sentimmts of his constituents,” and for his 
“able and fearless promulgation of Democratic 
truth.” “ Able and fearless promulgation of 
Democratic truth ” ! To proclaim that it is best 
that “ capital should own labor,” is an “able 
and fearless promulgation of Democratic truth ” ! 
So pronounces the Douglas Democracy of Mas- 
sachusetts in convention assembled. 

Workingmen of East Boston, of Massachu- 
setts, do not fail to remember that Herschel V. 
Johnson, who “ believes that capital should own 
labor,” who contemptuously tells workingmen 
to “look to the slaves in their workshops,” who 
insolently bids his adherents to “plant their foot 
on the necks of any man who dares say he will 
interfere with slavery anywhere,” who avows that 
“ so help him God ” he “ had rather have one of 
his negroes President than Abe Lincoln the rail- 
splitter,” is endorsed by the Douglas Democracy 
of Massachusetts for his “able and fearless pro- 
mulgation of Democratic truth” ! 

Workingmen of East Boston, of Massachu- 
setts, of the free North, will you, can you, go to 
the ballot boxes and give your votes for Herschel 
Y. Johnson, the “ able and fearless promulgator 
of the Democratic truth ” that “ capital should 
own labor ” ? 

Slavery, which has thus seared and blasted 
like a consuming curse the fairest soil of America, 
dishonored labor, degraded poor white laboring 
men in the South and heaped contempt upon the 
workingmen of the North, has silenced free 
speech and a free press, violated the sanctity of 
the post office, profaned the ballot-box to force 
itself upon unwilling Kansas, arrested, insulted, 
scourged, banished, imprisoned, and brutally 
murdered men guilty of no offence against law, 
humanity or religion. Mr. Underwood attends 
a national convention, summoned to restore the 
government to the policy of the Republican 
Eathers — to the policy of Washington and Jef- 
ferson — and he is forced by threats of mob vio- 
lence to flee from home, wife, children. Mrs. 
Douglas teaches poor children to read the Ten 
Commandments — the words of our Saviour “Suf- 
fer little children to come unto me” — and old 
Virginia, the mother of States and of statesmen, 
consigns her to the convict’s cell. Professor 
Hedrick thinks it best that Kansas shall become 
a free State, and he is deposed from his profes- 
sorship and forced to flee from his native Car- 
olina. A minister of religion has a few copies of 
Helper’s Impending Crisis, and North Carolina 
dooms him to the penitentiary. A poor Irish 
laborer says, “ It would be better for white labor- 
ing men if there were no slaves,” and South 
Carolina arrests him, strips him, lashes him, 
covers him with tar and feathers and hurries him 
out of her limits. A poor seamstress thinks slavery 
a wrong, and feeble woman as she is, chivalric 


South Carolina commits her to the dungeon. 
Mr. Evans mildly expresses the opinion that Free 
States are better than Slave States, and a brutal 
Texas mob lashes him to death and leaves his un- 
buried body for buzzards. A brave German 
condemns the deed of wanton murder, and he is 
forcibly driven from his home and the State of 
his adoption. A travelling map seller is sus- 
pected, and he is murdered, “translated,” in the 
brutal words of Texas journals, “ to another 
sphere of action ” — “ climbed a tree and hurt him- 
self in coming down.” A bookseller is sus- 
pected, and he is arrested by mob violence, his 
books burned, and he set afloat on the river, then 
hunted by dogs and more brutal men, forced to 
cross streams, to hide in the swamps for days to 
save his life. School teachers, mechanics, labor- 
ing men, are seized, disgraced, insulted, expelled, 
and a despotism as brutal as the despotism of the 
Bombas of Naples reigns over portions of this 
Democratic Republic. The honor, safety, liberty 
and life of American citizens are all in the keep- 
ing of men, brutal in word and deed — men drunk 
with the fanaticism of slavery. 

The champions of this system, which sets at defi- 
ance the laws of the living God, and the rights of 
human nature — this system, which buds and blos- 
soms with fruits so hateful to the sight and so 
bitter to the taste, now haughtily demand the 
right to expand it over the Territories, under the 
protection of national legislation. The rights, 
the honor, the permanent interests of the work- 
ingmen of America imperatively demand that 
this audacious claim shall be inflexibly resisted. 
On the 6th of November the people of America 
are summoned to decide, whether these Territo- 
ries shall be polluted by the barbarizing instru- 
ments of human bondage — the auction block, the 
handcuff, the blood-stained cowhide, the blood- 
hound, and all the brutalizing influences of 
slavery, or whether these Territories shall be 
illumined by the beams of equal, universal, and 
impartial liberty, and beautified by the cunning 
hand of intelligent, cultivated, skilled free labor. 
The mechanics of the fr^ States, whose work- 
manship in a thousand varied forms, beautifies the 
land ; the workingmen in the field, mine, mill, 
workshop, on the deck of vessel and steamer, 
everywhere, should, in view of the transcendent 
magnitude of the pending issues, ask themselves 
these vital questions : With what political organ- 
ization ought we to act? For which of the can- 
didates for Chief Magistrate of the Republic 
should we vote ? 

The workingmen of America cannot, surely, 
look to John Bell and his party to save the Ter- 
ritories to free labor and free laboring men. That 
party professes in the North to ignore that vital 
issue, while in the South it vies with the slave 
code Democracy in demanding the right to carry 
slaves, as property, into the Territories, under 
the protecting legislation of Congress. The Rich- 
mond Whig claims that “ John Bell is the only 
candidate that ever defended slavery upon prin- 
ciple, or advocated its extension.” John Bell, a 
Tennessee slaveholder, avows that the material 
interests of the country “ may trace to Slavery, 
as to their well-spring, their present gigantic 
proportions ; ” that “ humanity to the slave, not 
less than justice to the master , recommends the 
policy of diffusion and extension into any • new 
Territory;' and that “the general doctrine can- 
not well be questioned ; ” that the flag of the 
Union protects the citizen in the enjoyment of 
his rights of property of every description, recog- 
nized as such, in any of the States, on every sea, 




7 


and in every Territory of the Union." “ Recog- 

* nizing no principle,” adopting the wicked maxim 
of Washington Hunt, “to abandon principle for 
once,” the party of John Bell in the North seeks 

_ affiliation with the Democratic factions — not to 
elefct John Bell — but simply “to beat Lin- 
r coin.” With “Union” upon its lips, it courts 
alliance with the secession faction of Breckin- 

* ridge, with slave perpetualists who demand a 
„ slave code, clamor for the re-opening of the 

African slave trade, and mutter treasonable mal- 

* edictions upon the Union. It lovingly embraces 
Douglas, who “ don’t care whether slavery is 

*■ voted down or voted up,” and Johnson, who 
“ believes capital should own labor.” Working 
men of East Boston, of Massachusetts, of the 
North ! I say to you, with the sincerity of pro- 
found conviction, you can no more safely entrust 
the sacred cause of the freedom of the Territories 
to the conservative faction of John Bell, than 
could our revolutionary fathers confide the cause 
of American liberty and national independence 
to the “skulking neutrals,” or the cowardly 
conservatives who sighed for the British union, 

^ and for the enforcement of British laws. Otis, 
Hancock, Warren, Quincy, and the Adamses 
did not confide the cause of the Revolution to 
the conservative lawyers who applauded Hutch- 
% inson, the ablest tool of the British tyrant in 
America, nor to the shopkeepers, who in clan- 
destinely addressing him, “ lamented the loss of 
so good a Governor.” Do not, I pray you, en- 

* trust the cause of the toiling men of the Repub- 
lic to the nerveless conservatives, the dry goods 
trafhcers, who are eager to sell their principles 
as well as their goods. 

In the contests with the British Crown, pre- 
ceding the appeal to arms, history tells us, that 
“ at Boston the agents and supporters of the Brit- 
v ish ministers strove to bend the firmness of its 
people by holding up to the tradesmen the grim 
picture of misery and want, while Hutchinson 
promised to obtain in England a restoration of 
trade if the town would pay the first cost of the 
tea.” Alarmed by these “grim pictures of 
misery and want,” and seduced by the promises 

* of this adroit instrument of British tyranny, 
one hundred and twenty-three merchants and 
others of Boston clandestinely addressed Hutch- 

a inson, “ lamenting the loss of so good a Governor, 
admitting the propriety of indemnifying the East 
India Company, and appealing to his most 
benevolent disposition to procure speedy relief.” 
Twenty-four conservative lawyers endorsed “the 
general character and conduct” of this agent of 
despotism. The history that records the weak- 
'< ness and folly of these very respectable conserva- 
tive lawyers and shopkeepers, records the glorious 
fact that the people, “the thousands who de- 
4 pended on their daily labor for bread,” “ never 
regretted” that they were called upon to “ suffer 
, in a good cause.” Then the mechanics of Boston, 
led by Paul Revere, counciled with Samuel 
Adams concerning the mighty problems of Liberty 
and Independence. Alarmed by impotent threats 
4 of disunion, seduced by the hopes of increased 
j. Southern traffic, lured on by petty, personal am- 

* bition, conservative lawyers and shopkeepers of 
this age are imitating the ignoble example of the 
“Hutchinson Addressors.” Let the wbrking 
men of Massachusetts and of the country see to 
it, that the historic pen which shall record the 
acts in this “irrepressible conflict” between 

jj freedom and slavery in America, shall trace, for 
4 the admiration of all coming time the glorious 
fact that the men who earn their bread by the 


sweat of their brows, have followed the bright 
example of the mechanics of the Revolution. 

Lured by the glittering prizes of ambition, 
seduced by the blandishments or awed by the 
menaces of slave masters, the Democracy has 
been for years the pliant instrument of the slave 
power. It has fought the battles, won the vic- 
tories and shared the crimes of slavery. Once 
the Democratic party talked of the rights of man ; 
now it talks only of the rights of property in man. 
The Democratic party, as organized and led, 
during the past few years, has been the enemy of 
the free white laboring men of America. To-day 
there is not a measure dear to the free white 
working men of the United States that has the 
support of the Democratic party. In sentiment, 
in principle, in measure, the slave Democracy is 
hostile to the laboring men of America. Faith- 
less to the cause of humanity, faithful only to 
the assumptions and claims of slave masters, the 
Democracy has staggered on beneath the burden 
of its crimes against the human race to its in- 
glorious fall. Torn by bitter feuds and broken 
into hostile factions, the Democracy still clings 
instinctively to the cau£e of slavery. 

Breckinridge bears aloft the banner of slavery 
expansion, slavery protection, and slavery domi- 
nation, and around that black flag rallies the 
Democratic masses of the South and the men of 
the North who believe with Mr. Buchanan, that 
“ the master has the right to take his slaves into 
the Territories, as property, and have it protected 
there under the Federal Constitution ” — that 
“ neither Congress nor the Territorial Legisla- 
ture, nor any human power, has any authority 
to annul or impair that vested right.” Benjamin 
F. Hallett tells the assembled Breckinridge De- 
mocracy of Massachusetts that there can never 
be a successful fljlemocratic party in the free 
States, so he goes 11 with the slave code Democracy 
of the South. There can never be a successful 
Democratic party in the North ! What an ad- 
mission is this ! There can never be a successful 
Democratic party in the land of free speech, free 
press, free schools, free labor, and free educated 
workingmen, trained in self-government ! Suc- 
cessful Democracy buds and blooms only in the 
land of bondage, where the right to think, to dis- 
cuss, to act, is not recognized; where labor is dis- 
honored and laboring men despised ! Surely the 
workingmen of the North cannot, will not sustain 
by their suffrages that false, foul, .profane Democ- 
racy, which draws its life, its soul, from slavery. 

Douglas “ Don’t care whether slavery is voted 
down or voted up.” To him it is a matter of 
supreme indifference whether a million and a 
half of the square miles of America shall bo 
gladdened by the footsteps, and beautified by the 
hands of free men, who acknowledge no man 
master, or whether they shall be seared, blasted, 
desolated, by 

, The old and chastened lie, 

The feudal curse, whose whips and yokes 
Insult humanity. 

The laboring men of the North, aye, and of 
the South, too, should never forget, nor forgive 
that heartless declaration. The peerless Wash- 
ington cared whether slavery was voted down or 
voted up in the Territories, for he “ trusted we 
should have a confederacy of Free States,” and 
he deemed the ordinance of 1787 “a wise meas- 
ure.” The working man who votes the Doug- 
las and Johnson ticket, votes for a President who 
“don’t care whether slavery is voted down or 
voted up,” and for a Vice-President who “be- 
lieves capital should own labor.” Can a work- 




8 


ing man, wlio eats his bread in the sweat of his face, 
give such a vote ? Such a vote would be a betrayal 
of the cause of the toiling masses of America, an 
act of self-humiliation, which should bring the 
blush of conscious shame to the cheek. 

The Republican party, brought into being by 
the necessities of the country and the needs of the 
age, rejects the wicked dogma that slaves, the 
creatures of local law, are recognized by the Con- 
stitution as property, that the Constitution of 
Republican America carries slavery wherever it 
goes, and that the national flag protects slavery 
wherever it waves. The Republican party 
“ cares whether slavery is voted down or voted 
up ” in the Territories, rejects with horror the 
idea that “ capital should own labor,” disowns 
the craven declaration that “ it is the part of pa- 
triotism atfd of duty to recognize no principle,” 
and bravely and hopefully accepts the duties now 
imposed upon the people of the United States, by 
the Providence of Almighty God. The Republi- 
can party proclaims its living faith in the self- 
evident truths of the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence, now scoffed at and jeered at by the leaders 
of the slave Democracy/ as “ rhetorical flourish- 
es,” “ glittering generalities,” “ self-evident lies,” 
“ farragoes of nonsense;” pronounced by Breck- 
inridge, “ abstractions,” which, if carried into 
practice, would “ lead our country rapidly to 
destruction,” and declared by Douglas to mean 
only that “ British subjects on this continent 
were equal to British subjects born and residing 
in Great Britain.” 

The Republican party believes, with its chosen 
leader, Abraham Lincoln, that “ these expres- 
sions” of apostate Democratic politicians, “differ- 
ing in form are identical in object and effect — the 
supplanting of the principles of free government, 
and restoring those of classification, caste and 
legitimacy ;” that “ they wouM delight a convo- 
cation of crowned heads, plotting against the peo- 
ple ;” that “ they are the vanguard, the sappers 
and miners, of returning despotism.” The Re- 
publican party believes, too, with its noble candi- 
date, that the “abstract truth” of the declaration 
is “ applicable to all men and all times ;” that 
“to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a 
rebuke and a stumbling-block to the harbingers 
of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.” Accept- 
ing as its living faith the creed of the equality of 
mankind, the Republican party recognizes the 
poor, the humble, the sons of toil, whose hands 
are hardened by honest labor, whose limbs are 
chilled by the blasts of winter, whose cheeks are 
scorched by the suns of summer, as the equals be- 
fore the law of the most favored of the sons of men. 

Believing with the Republican Fathers, of the 
North and of the South — with Washington and 
Franklin, Adams and Jefferson, Henry and Jay, 
Morris and Mason, Madison and Hamilton, King 
and Munroe, Pinckney and Martin, and their 
illustrious associates — that slavery is “a sin of 
crimson dye,” “ an atrocious debasement of hu- 
man nature,” “ a dreadful calamity,” which 
“ lessens the sense of the equal rights of mankind, 
and habituates us to tyranny and oppression ;” 
believing with Henry Clay, that “ slavery is a 
wrong, a grievous wrong no contingency can 
make right,” the Republican party is opposed to 
slavery everywhere. Recognizing the rights of 
the States, it does not claim power to abolish 
slavery in the States by Congressional legislation, 
but it claims the power to exclude slavery from 

P (JsSUl^kJfcl'^R 


the Territories, and by the blessing of God it will 
use every legal power and make every honorable 
effort to expel slavery from every rood of the 
Territory of the Republic. 

Workingmen of Massachusetts, you who eat 
your bread in the sweat of the face, would you 
make the self-evident truths of the charter of In- 
dependence again the active faith of America — 
would you weaken the influences of slavery and 
the power of the slave masters over the National 
Government — would you expel slavery and its 
degrading influences from the Territories — would 
you bring Kansas as a free Commonwealth into 
the Union — would you suppress the reviving 
African slave trade, now dishonoring the nation — 
would you erase from the statutes of New Mexico 
the inhuman slave code, and the more infamous 
code authorizing employers to degrade white labor- 
ing men with blows, while it denies all means of 
protection, by closing the courts against their 
appeals for redress — would you set apart the pub- 
lic domain for homesteads for the landless — would 
you construct a railroad across the central regions 
of the continent to the Pacific— would you adjust 
the revenue laws so as to incidentally favor Amer- 
ican labor — would you win back our lost influ- 
ence with the nations South of us on this conti- 
nent, and thus increase and develop our manufac- 
turing and commercial interests ; would you 
reform existing abuses, strengthen the ties of 
interest and affection, which bind these sister 
States together, and put the Republic in the van 
of advancing nations, then, then commit, fully 
and unreservedly commit yourselves to the cause 
of Republicanism, to the support pf the Repub- 
lican party, and its tried and trusted candidates. 
Born in the ranks of the toiling masses, reared 
in the bosom of the people, trained in the hard 
school of manual labor, Abraham Lincoln and 
Hannibal Hamlin are true to the rights, the inter- 
ests, and the dignity of the workingmen of the 
Republic — worthy to lead their advancing hosts 
to victory for the vindication of rights as old as 
creation, and as wide as humanity. 

The sons of toil in Pennsylvania and Indiana 
— the toiling men slavery brands as “ greasy 
mechanics,” “filthy operatives,” “small fisted 
farmers,” i‘ hireling manual laborers who are 
essentially slaves,” “ the mud-sills of society ” — 
have closed the contest by pronouncing their 
irreversible verdict for Republicanism. Massa- 
chusetts will respond to Pennsylvania and Indi- 
ana by a voice not to be misunderstood, by mak- 


ing John A. Andrew her Chief Magistrate. 


Workingmen of East Boston, of this District, 
upon you is devolved the duty — I know you will 
joyfully perform — of returning Anson Burlin- 
game to the Congress of the United States. You 
have trusted him and he has been true to you. 
His votes have been for freedom and for the 
rights and interests of free labor and free, law- 
loving men. His voice in Congress and before as- 
sembled and admiring thousands, has ever uttered 
the clear accents of freedom, and thousands of 
the young men of America, won by his burning 
words, have rallied to the support of that cause 
our hearts love and our judgments approve. Ilsi 
defeat would sadden hundred of thousands of 
Republican hearts and cast a hue of sorrow over 
the jfrys of the coming triumph. His election 
will gladden the hearts of millions, and win for 
you the applauding voices of the Republicans of 
all America. 




Wright & Totter, Prs., 4 Spring Lane. 


E REPUBLICAN IIEAD-QUARTERS, BOSTON. 


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